How You Define Your Job: Self-Loathing or Non-Stop Interview Mode

This is a piece I wrote in 2010 within the first few years of college after noticing how so many of my fellow college graduates were doing a bad job at talking about their jobs

I went to a job interview and waited in a room with some other candidates as they were talking to each other about what they were previously doing in professional terms. I notice that people fall into two categories when you ask them what do they do: One is self-loathing and the other is people in non-stop interview mode.

The first is the self-loathing 20-something who doesn’t think much of what they do. They might say, “I just work for a non-profit,” even though that doesn’t explain much. Defining your life by your company’s designation in the U.S. 401K tax code seems to be trendy and I’m not sure why. These people are depressing to listen to and they are probably depressing themselves whenever they speak about their job. When you ask them how life is after college, they often say “nothing much, I just work,” as if they’re in serving time in prison. Most of their advice centers around enjoying college life while you can because it all goes downhill from there. Those people never really made me look forward to graduating much.

I think a lot of these people are unhappy because they’re on the bottom of the totem poll, but the way i see it, there’s no guarantee that your job will be any more exciting or fulfilling when you get higher up anyway, so they might as well enjoy where…